A multimedia artist and collaborative event organizer, David Fodel spent most of the ‘80s working as a media designer, technician and artist for theater and musical events in the Baltimore, USA area. In 1984 he founded Artlab, a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the creative potentials of electronic media. From 1984 to 1987 Fodel produced multi-media arts events, including a series of anarchic proto-raves at HourHaus, an artists' collaborative living/working space in Baltimore. He also produced an underground cable TV program (DeviantTV) and was a member of the Baltimore Cable Access Commission. In 1988 Fodel co-founded a fringe culture arts magazine (Texture Magazine) which published quarterly for 3 years. These early forays into the world of traditional and digital multimedia lead Fodel to help create a prototype interactive CD-ROM magazine (HyperTexture) in 1991-92, for which he received multiple grants and industry alliance support. In 1992-1993, working with school-aged kids, he co-produced an acclaimed “Virtual Classroom” which investigated the creative and educational possibilities of emerging technologies.Fodel's multimedia work has been featured in the International Symposium on Electronic Arts and the 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle, his original electronic music has been released on several independent compilations (most notably Obliq Recordings and the "Spaced Out" and "Audiovisualize" DVD's from the UK's Addictive Television. Recent works of his "live cimnemonics" have been performed in Berlin during Transmediale '05, the ADAPT Festival '06 in Denver, and at the Belmar LAB in Denver in April of 2007.

Now in its third season, MediaLive presents a diverse selection of world-class performance media works — art that blends media technology and human interaction into a live audiovisual experience.

This year we are proud to present an exceptional international line-up bringing artists from London, Malaysia, Moscow, Montreal, New York, Chicago, San Jose, Dallas and Denver.

MediaLive performances and discussions will be presented at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday, November 14 and Sunday, Nov 16 and at ATLAS Institute, University of Colorado Boulder on Saturday, Nov 15.

Opening on September 18th at the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria Campus in Denver, is "The Emperor's New Aesthetic", co-curated by David Fodel and Matt Jenkins, Associate Professor of Art at Metro State University of Denver.

The show title references "The New Aesthetic" and the children's story by Hans Christian Andersen. The phrase 'Emperor's new clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. The "New Aesthetic" is a term coined by James Bridle at SXSW Interactive in 2012, refering to a general set of principles and processes that speak to the proliferation of surveillance, high technology and control structures through art. It has become an overused and over-hyped term since that time.

The idea is to poke fun at the burgeoning institutionalization of "the new aesthetic", "post-internet" and "new-media" art in general, while still acknowledging the potential for cultural, political, economic and aesthetic intervention inherent in control of access / protocols / networks.

The show will include interactive technological objects, projection pieces, internet-based works, and 2D/3D objects from approx. a dozen artists, including international pioneers of Net.art, Glitch, and "digitalism" like Alexei Shulgin, Olia Lialina, Jon Cates, Phillip Stearns, Pox Party (Jon Satrom & Ben Syverson), Brian Kane, Sophia Brueckner, Jeremy Bailey, Nick Briz, VTOL, and Denver artists Mia Woody, Matt Evans and Sarah Knutson.The show runs through October 24th and will feature a talk/performance by VTOL who is coming in from Moscow to be a part of this show, and MediaLive 2014, in Boulder in November.